Note—If you want an example of how deeply engrained White privilege has benefited millions while largely excluding Blacks and minorities look no further than the GI Bill which lifted individuals and families from poverty or limited prospects into the middle class. In turn that set up subsequent generations with a head start based on wealth acquisition over time denied to most African-Americans.
On June 22, 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944,
better known as the G.I. Bill of Rights. Barring Social Security, it was the most successful social program in American history. It set the stage for the long economic boom of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s and the rapid
ascendency of the middle class
by forestalling an immediate post-War crisis, fueling an unprecedented housing boom, and by providing American industry and government with a highly
educated workforce. Getting that result was not easy.
In 1944 the end of World War II was in sight even if more than a year of bloody conflict still lay ahead. That of course was good news. But it also kept a lot of folks up with night sweats. What would happen when the largest mobilization in history—millions of armed service members, mostly men—came to an end. Battle hardened veterans would be dumped into an economy that would be naturally
rapidly contracting as the war production boom came wound down.
Men with no skills beyond
aiming an M-1 or swabbing a
deck would be thrown into competition for scarce jobs with workers who had mastered all sorts of production
skills in the defense plants. Everyone expected a post-war recession;
it was just a matter of how severe. Some fretted it could relapse into the Depression that
only really ended when war production began to ramp up in 1939.
Similar
conditions had led to the rise of fascism
and Communism in Europe after World War I and huge domestic turmoil in the US that included mass strike waves, race
riots, and the great Red Scare
crackdown that threatened basic Constitutional
and Civil Rights.
Meanwhile the demobilizing troops—draftees and volunteers alike had been vaguely
promised that their years of
sacrifice would be honored and rewarded and that they would somehow be
“taken care of.” Conservatives
in Congress were already making noises against “undeserved giveaways” and expenditures that would get in the way of deep cuts to high wartime
taxes on the wealthy.
The historic models were not good.
After the Civil War a stingy Congress was parsimonious in handing out pensions and even the politically powerful Grand Army of the
Republic was frustrated with
trying to loosen Congressional purse
strings as their membership aged.
As a result, many veterans joined
the labor movement during the decades of open class war of
the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. They burned
down rail yards during the Great
Railway Strike of 1877 and were the backbone
of Coxey’s Army when it marched on Washington in 1894.
After the Great War Congress sought to buy
time by promising a Bonus payment to
Veterans in 1945. But when the Great Depression hit sending unemployment soaring thousands joined
the Bonus March on
Washington that the Hoover
administration was terrified
signaled a revolution.
The Bonus March was brutally
dispersed by the Army under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. No one wanted a replay of that, either.
In the White House President Roosevelt and his New Deal holdover staff began to put together a relatively modest package of benefits fearing Congressional
Republican united opposition. The bill
Roosevelt proposed would have been means
tested—only poor veterans would
be eligible for most of the benefits and education
grants for four years of college would
only go to those who got top scores on
a written test.
The leaders of the two most powerful veteran’s organizations, the American
Legion and the Veterans of Foreign
Wars (VFW) with millions of
members, plenty of political clout, and
the prospect of enrolling waves of new GIs had other ideas. Harry
W. Colmery, a liberal Democrat
and a former National Commander of the
American Legion—yes, children, such persons once existed—sketched an early draft proposal for a bill at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. The then current
Commander Warren Atherton, a
Republican lawyer, helped with the final drafts.
With the backing of both Veterans organizations,
he quickly gained the support of Sen.
Ernest McFarland (D-Ariz.) as
the principal sponsor in the Upper Chamber. He got some bi-partisan support, especially Rep. Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts who was the
Republican Chair of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. The bill was introduced in January 1944 and
despite being sweepingly more generous gained the support of the President.
With the Legion and VFW pulling out all stops on pressuring Congress and the hastily
organized support of GI families, especially their wives, the
Bill rushed through Congress and was adopted by a comfortable margin in the
Democratic Senate and the Republican held House. Only the most curmudgeonly of conservatives groused, and they
did so discretely.
The main provisions of the GI Bill which would reshape American
society were:
·
Dedicated
payments of tuition and living
expenses to attend high school, college or vocational/technical school.
·
Low-cost
home mortgages.
·
Low-interest
loans to start a business.
·
52 weeks of unemployment
compensation.
To be eligible a veteran must have been on active duty
during the war years for at least 90
days and had not been dishonorably discharged. Combat
was not a requirement. All
veterans including women and minorities—the most controversial component of the legislation—were eligible.
The most glaring omission was those who served in the Merchant Marine, although they had been considered military personnel in times of war in under the Merchant
Marine Act of 1936. This even though
Merchant Marine suffered higher losses in combat by percentage than any of
the recognized Armed Services. At the signing ceremony Roosevelt urged
Congress to act to rectify the omission.
They never did.
Although Blacks and other minorities were technically eligible for full benefits, custom, political expediency,
and Federal timidity conspired to
deny many their rights under the program.
Just as many New Deal programs had done before, administration of the
benefits were left to local, White officials and a tacit policy of “deferring to local custom”
many Blacks were shut out, especially but not exclusively in the Jim Crow South. Many of those not directly turned down were discouraged
from applying and many were never
informed of their rights by the outreach programs of the Veterans’
Administration and the Veterans’ organizations. Most affected was the home loan program because there was no requirement for banks
to serve Black borrowers or developers to sell to them. Of the first
67,000 mortgages insured by the G.I.
Bill, fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites, virtually universal exclusion.
Vital education benefits were also impacted. Most Colleges
and Universities still excluded
Blacks or admitted them only in small numbers under strict quota systems. That shunted most potential student off to trade schools, including many fly-by-night operations set up just to
harvest GI Bill benefits or to the limited number of historically black colleges which were quickly overwhelmed. And,
once again, local official found ways to dispute
payments to those schools. Only one
fifth of the 100,000 blacks who had applied for educational benefits had
registered in college by 1946 and the hard pressed Black schools had been
forced to turn away 20,000 eligible vets for lack of space for
them. And in most of the South, it was
virtually impossible for Blacks to get their unemployment benefits under the
program.
This has had a generational effect as previously
poor or working class Whites
were lifted into the Middle Class giving their children and grandchildren advantages not available to the offspring and descendants of Black vets.
It is one of the most insidious and
invisible elements of White privilege that the beneficiaries never even think about.
Despite these failures, the GI Bill
was an enormous success for its favored beneficiaries and for the economy.
By 1956, roughly 8.8 million World
War II veterans had used the education benefits including 2.2 million to attend
colleges or universities and 5.6 million for some kind of training program. Millions more took advantage of GI Bill
mortgage loans. One of those was my
father, W.M. Murfin who in that very
year used it to upgrade us from a slightly run down 1890 frame rental in Cheyenne, Wyoming to a three bedroom brick ranch in a new
subdivision out by the airport.
Many more would continue to use the
benefits for decades to come.
Here are some of the results of the
GI Bill.
At the time it was enacted many
supporters felt that the most critical
component was the guaranteed one year of unemployment benefits which paid $20 weekly. That was hardly a princely sum and difficult
for a person supporting a family to get by on. But it was a very livable payment for singles providing a modest standard of living. But it turned out that fewer veterans took
advantage of this than anticipated or who took advantage of education
benefits. Less than 20 % of the money
set aside for the program was used.
The biggest beneficiaries of the unemployment benefits were those who
had the hardest time adjusting to civilian life including
those who we now recognize suffered from
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Many of them had trouble reconnecting with family and could not establish stable relationships like the millions of vets who rushed into marriage after the
war. They were rootless. Think
of the lead character in James Jones’s
novel Some Came Running who was played by Frank Sinatra in the movie.
It is never explicitly stated
but understood that the troubled Vet who returns to his hometown pays for his lodgings
and carousing with his unemployment benefits.
Some Vets purposely took the year to
unwind and find themselves
gravitating to places like New York’s
Greenwich Village, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Among them were several who became
leading figures in Beat movement and
the post-war art and theater scenes. Thus, those government checks had profound cultural
impact.
But the limited use of unemployment benefits
was because the post-war recession was not
as deep or
long as many had feared. Pent up demand for automobiles, durable goods,
and housing all fueled a rapid recovery and ushered in an unprecedented boom period. Millions of women left the workforce
voluntarily or involuntarily
opening jobs and the huge numbers of vets who took advantage of educational
benefits which delayed their entry into the job market for years by which time
the economy was roaring again.
Before the War, most Americans who
did not live in rural areas and small towns, did not live in single family homes, especially the working class and urban poor—a population that had been swollen by the depression.
Most lived in apartments,
flats, and tenements. Truly astonishing numbers, including
whole families, lived in boarding houses,
other rooming houses, and in residential hotels. The GI Bill, and to some extent FHA Loans, changed that with
astonishing speed. Vets were offered low interest, zero down payment home loans from established banks backed by Federal guarantees and insurance. Terms of the
loans favored new construction over
the purchase of existing housing stock,
a nod at stimulating the construction industry.
GIs and their families poured out of old central cities and
into sprawling suburban developments
symbolized by Levittown. Old established neighborhoods were disrupted
and broken up. Blacks, more recent immigrants, and poor whites took over those areas. And the coming of Blacks stoked white flight to the suburbs by those who had been left behind.
The resulting sprawl also
contributed to the growing auto centered
culture—roads, highways, parking lots, shopping centers, drive-in everything with
all the attending pollution and other effects for good and ill.
The new suburban life-style suddenly enshrined
the nuclear family—dad, stay-at-home mom, and children as the cultural
norm. Before the war many lived
together in extended, multi-generational
families. Despite the relatively recent origin of this norm, contemporary
conservatives and reactionaries consider
it both time honored tradition and actually anointed by God even as shifting
culture and a new harsh economic
reality have rendered it nearly obsolete.
But many argue it was the education
benefits that had the farthest reaching consequences. The many college
graduates produced, mostly as admirers of the “Greatest Generation” are eager to point out, motivated, driven, and focused entered the job market in time
to provide the engineers, scientists, and
other innovators that contributed to
one revolution after another in technology,
transportation, communication, and productions. On their shoulders America became the undisputed economic master of a shattered world.
They also filled the ranks of what in retrospect
might be called the Age of Middle
Management in the giant corporations
that came to dominate the post
war era and government at all levels.
The sons of shoemakers, sharecroppers,
and factory hands became junior executives and vice presidents. Some went even further. It
was a white collar revolution that
raised millions into the middle class and firmly set expectations of achievement
for the Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and
subsequent generations that followed them.
But in the Digital Age, with globalization,
and the aftermath of the 2008 economic
collapse most of those jobs disappeared
as surely as did those of coal
miners and rust belt factory
workers. Yet the myth that a college education is an
automatic ticket to the middle
class and success
lingers. The grandchildren and great
grandchildren of those returning Vets are now graduating from college saddled
with enormous debt and dim job prospects for many. We have entered the age of Uber drivers with master’s degrees, retail clerks and low level managers with B.A.s,
and thirty-year-old waitresses still hustling tables at Chili’s. Many can’t
launch independent lives and society is getting used to the return of multi-generation homes
as under-employed alums linger in or return to
their parents’
houses.
Although the versions of the GI Bill
have remained in force, veterans of subsequent conflicts did not get the same comprehensive boost as did the World
War II vets. Troops returning from Korea found that instead of their institutions receiving payment for tuition and fees, they were
given a flat amount regardless of
cost of their education to
apply to their expanses. That figure—about
$150 a month usually failed to pay all expanses and was reduced in value over the years by education inflation which ran ahead of the general cost of
living.
In 1984 the revised Montgomery GI Bill — Active Duty (MGIB) sponsored by Rep. Gillespie
V. “Sonny” Montgomery, corrected and raised
benefits but extended the time of active service required and put in place a
10 year window to use them after
leaving the service. Once again
inflation ate up the increased monthly payments despite occasional boosts. The Montgomery Bill remains the underlying law regarding these
veterans’ benefits.
In 2010 Congress after much delay
passed President Barak Obama’s tweak of benefits, the Post-9/11 GI Bill a/k/a
G.I. Bill 2.0 which among other
thing expanded the eligibility of members of the National Guard or Reserves
called up for active duty—troops
that the Armed Services heavily relied
on in the Gulf War, Bosnia, Somalia,
Afghanistan, and Iraq as well as
other anti-terrorist actions. Education benefits were redefined with a new
cap and there was additional minor tinkering.
Under heavy pressure in Congress guarantees
were written into the law
for payment to private, for
profit trade schools, and an explosion
of iffy on-line diploma mills despite the administration’s desire to rein in the worst offenders who saddled vets with courses most never completed
and/or worthless degrees and training certificates not recognized by businesses or legitimate educational institutions. In 2012, Obama issued an Executive Order to ensure
that military service members,
veterans, and their families would not be aggressively targeted by sub-prime colleges. These regulations caused the failure of heavily advertised ITT
Tech and Corinthian Colleges which
abruptly cease operations after the
Obama administration slapped them with federal sanctions. Many
more were in danger of going out of business.
Donald
Trump countermanded Obama’s
Executive Order with one of his own that unleashed
the controversial schools to resume
preying on veterans and their families. Trump, of course, famously lent his name to sham school Trump University which bilked vets and others and is still
under criminal investigation.
Trouble with private schools date
back to the beginning of the program.
Although man World War II vets received legitimate technical and trade
training but many others were snagged
in phony correspondence school scams. These bad actors have been a
constant plague on the program over the years routinely using clout to beat back attempts at reform.
Interestingly, a higher percentage
of Vietnam Veterans—72%—used GI Bill
compared to 51% of World War II vets and 43% of Korean alumni. But a large
percentage of them used the benefits at questionable trade and technical schools.
ITT was one of many for profit schools that trolled for active duty troops and veterans. The heavily advertised school with campuses around the country and on-line programs went belly-up when its life blood was cut off for exploiting its students.
The advent of the Internet allowed on-line college programs to enter the fray alongside the
traditional training schools. Some
on-line programs by recognized colleges and universities were legitimate and hailed by many as
the wave of the future
especially for those already in the workforce or with family responsibilities seeking re-education or career
upgrades. Unfortunately many of the
for profit schools that sprang up preying on Veterans were virtually useless.
Today each of the armed services has their own regulations interpreting the terms and eligibility of GI Bill and other veterans’
benefits. Many of those regulations,
like those requiring set minimums of
time in continuing deployment abroad have caused many troops and vets not to get the full education benefits that they
thought they were entitled to when they enlisted in the “all-volunteer” armed
forces. Many are told that they will
have to re-enlist or volunteer for additional deployments in order to get what their initial recruiters promised.
Along with other cuts to Veterans’
services, a general deterioration of
the Veteran’s medical care, and high rates of PSTD, post-9/11 vets suffering extended unemployment and homelessness are on a sharp rise. Continuing steep rises in housing costs have exacerbated
the growing homeless population.
Most don’t even know what a boost their
World War II predecessors received under the original GI Bill.
No comments:
Post a Comment